When do you become a professional programmer?

I’ve been programming for the better part of my life and consider myself to be a programmer since the first program I wrote in Basic (please don’t tell anyone about that).

Throughout my career I ran into many aspiring programmers who want to become programmers but despite the fact that they have already studied several technologies and programmed several applications still do not consider themselves as programmers.

I find it interesting as I don’t recall submitting an application to anyone at the age of 8 asking for a license to program. I simply made the decision to BE a programmer.

I personally don’t have years of education or even an official Computer Science degree but I have been working professionally as a Programmer for at least 17 years.

I feel this is an important message to convey to anyone interested in becoming a professional programmer since as unimportant as it may seem, I strongly believe that the decision to be a programmer precedes any education on the subject, training credentials or even a professional job as one.

From my experience, taking the “beingness” of a programmer has opened more doors to me than anything else I have done throughout my career.

This is something that most interview preparation books seem to miss but when being interviewed for a Programmer job, your presence, your Programmer beingness and your certainty makes a big impact on the eyes of the interviewer. You are perceived as a responsible individual who is capable of tackling any problem that will be thrown at you no matter how difficult it is and no matter your experience level is in solving a particular problem.

The world of technology is far too great for any single person on the face of the earth to be comfortable with every aspect of it. Compound that with the fact that it is also changing at a rate that is impossible to keep up with and you realize that the ones who get the good jobs are the ones who can convince the interviewers that they have the necessary programmer “beingness” to bring it off. Not the ones who can memorize some esoteric algorithms or library function that have no real-world use.

I recently helped a good friend land his dream job. While having me as an “inside connection” played a minor role, he was made to go through the ringers just like any other interviewee that came on site. In preparation to these interviews I did not focus at all on preparing him technically. I worked with him on his programmer “beingness”, his professionalism and his presence to the interviewers.

While he had only a few months of training and zero experience, in contrast the “competing” candidate had over 10 years of proven experience, my friend got the job because he was perceived by the decision makers to be more capable to tackle day-to-day real world problems, be a better team player and having a good, healthy “hungry” attitude toward the job.

On the flip side, I’ve seen brilliant programmers — far smarter than I am — not get the job they came to interview for, simply because they lacked that essential element of a Programmer "beingness".

So as far as I am concerned, Shakespeare's eternal question: “to be or not to be” is answered simply with: To Be!